I’ve been running a bunch of money almost as long as Warren Buffett, but Warren’s made a bigger pile. I am CEO, CIO and founder of Atalanta Sosnoff Capital, LLC, a private investment management company with $6 billion in assets under management. Sold my Geico and American Express holdings prematurely, but sported one of the first beards on Wall Street in 1964. I was a hedge fund operator when only a handful of investors could define this construct. Later, I made a hostile tender for Caesar’s World, 1987, but my corporate clients frowned on this gambit. Today, activist operators like Carl Icahn stand revered as saviors. While a Forbes columnist for many years, the late, great editor of Forbes, Jim Michaels, forbade me to use Yiddish expressions because his readers in North Dakota wouldn’t get it. Alas, I can’t make a living as a writer. I’ve learned to be "Humble On Wall Street." "Silent Investor, Silent Loser" embraces a shareholder activist theme along with my love of France and contemporary art. My new book, "Master Class for Investors," is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com. Its theme is the interaction between perception and misperception in financial markets and the art world.

11/05/2012 @ 11:58AM3,868 views

My Ragamuffins Vs. Apple

I sense the market’s growing impatience. Nobody can figure out whether Google’s reinvestment rate is acceptable or not. Apple makes just small fill-in deals. I doubt massive share buybacks are in the cards. This happens among slower growers like IBM, Intel and Microsoft. They’re doing the right thing. Underutilized, cash turns into cowpats.

If I’m right and there’s some revulsion over super growthies’ valuation and their unanalyzable metrics, ragamuffin investing makes a comeback. Ironically, this is how Buffett got started 60 years ago when security analysis was in its infancy, and he had no competition. The first 9 months of this year belonged to Apple. Nada, mas!

I expect at least three of my ragamuffins, General Motors, Citigroup and Sirius show late foot. GM rose 10 percent overnight on its good earnings report, the quarter 50 percent above analysts’ projections. I never thought I’d ever say this – what’s good for GM is good for the country.

Martin T. Sosnoff is chairman and founder of Atalanta Sosnoff Capital, LLC, an investment management company with $6 billion in assets under management. Sosnoff has published two books about his experiences on Wall Street, Humble on Wall Street and Silent Investor, Silent Loser. He was a columnist for many years at Forbes Magazine and for three years at The New York Post.Sosnoff owns personally and / or Atalanta Sosnoff Capital owns for clients the following investments cited in this commentary: Apple, Arch Coal, ExxonMobil, General Motors, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Google, Amazon, Sirius XM Radio, News Corporation, Alpha Natural Resources and Microsoft.

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“I doubt massive share buybacks are in the cards”. Underutilized cash turns into cowpats”? Martin, did you know that Apple owns the largest hedge fund in the world and that they have their hard earned money working for them as of this moment?Tim Cook has mentioned in the past on several occasions that the company will indeed buy back shares. You are either extremely dumb or unbelievably uninformed or possibly conspiring with a hedge fund(s) and money managers that sit on different exchanges manipulating this stock trying to scare retail shareholders out of their shares by writing articles like this one. Jim Cramer actually spoke about this tactic that the street uses to make money off weak retail hands.This stock is worth a lot more than what it’s currently trading at and smart money knows this and is accumulating. Apple currently at a PE of around 13 is a buy of a life time. You have no factual information and everything you write is based on opinion. I hope the SEC gets a hold of your e-mails and puts you and the henchmen you work for in jail. You are a white collar crook.

Listen up, pussy toad. Your rabid note is entirely uncalled for. If you read my column with any care, you would have noted that I said in the third paragraph that at $600 I’m a holder, market weighted, and looking for a 10 percent annualized rate of return. This is not exactly a bear market raid.